Gov. Peter Shumlin's made up his mind the new Air Force F-35 fighter jet should come to the Vermont Air Guard base in South Burlington -- but he still wants to go to Florida to hear one for himself.

A first hand look, he said, can't hurt.

"I do think when you're making decisions of this magnitude you know what you're talking about," Shumlin said Thursday in announcing the trip.

Shumlin will bring the mayors of Winooski and Burlington along with him to Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle.

The trip will be paid for by the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation and private donors.The roughly $25,000 charter flight can carry nine passengers down and back in one day.

The guest list -- chosen by GBIC President Frank Cioffi -- includes the governor and his security guard, two mayors, top Vermont Air National Guard brass, a business leader, and two journalists chosen by the governor's staff.

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Conspicuously absent? Anyone who has spoken out against the plane.

"I was not invited... South Burlington was not invited," said Rosanne Greco, the city council chairwoman who also happens to be a retired Air Force colonel.

Residents of South Burlington, and nearby Winooski, are more directly impacted by airport noise than any other community.

The South Burlington City Council has taken a formal vote against the F-35, citing fears over noise and economic harm.

Winooski's City Council has not yet taken that step.

"No one's going to change their minds," Cioffi said Friday, explaining why South Burlington didn't get a seat.

"That's odd," the city's leader responded, "but then I don't understand the purpose of the trip."

She said she does not see how three "amateurs could possibly draw more accurate conclusions" from six hours on the ground in Florida that the U.S. Air Force's multi-million dollar noise studies tailored specifically to Burlington failed to uncover.

Still, she said, she would have loved to go along.

"It's never been about a subjective interpretation about what I or anyone else thinks about the noise," Greco said. "It's about the scientific study of the effects of long-term exposure to noise. Its duration, its intensity. and the frequency of it."

With Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger also firmly on record supporting the F-35, the closest thing to a neutral party on the trip appears to be Winooski Mayor Michael O'Brien.

Winooski is directly under the flight path and while its citizens are sharply divided over the F-35 the city council has only requested more information from the Air Force on the F-35's likely impact on city property values and human health. Those answers have not yet been forthcoming.

Next week at Eglin, O'Brien said, the military plans to show the Vermont politicians what an F-35 take-off and landing sounds like -- alongside F-16 jets similar to those now flying in Burlington -- with and without after-burners that dramatically ramp up the roar.

"I'm going down trying to be objective, an open-mind, come back and report what I heard," said Mayor O'Brien, a Winooski native who has lived with jet noise all his life. "The key to me is, is (the F-35) louder, and perceptibly louder?"

The Air Force studies say yes, projecting a wider noise impact than the F-16 -- affecting roughly 9,000 residents in Chittenden County neighborhoods including Winooski and South Burlington, two of Vermont's most densely populated communities.

But Shumlin and many business leaders see the F-35 as the ticket to a continued military payroll at the Burlington Airport after the F-16 jets now based there are eventually retired.

The various arguments surrounding the F-35 basing decision were the focus of an exclusive five-part series broadcast last month by WPTZ NewsChannel Five that included acoustic testing at Eglin and in South Burlington.

But GBIC leaders concede the upcoming trip is less a fact-finding than military lobbying effort.

"It's pretty important for the state to show as much solid support for 1,100 (Air Guard) jobs as we possibly can," Cioffi told NewsChannel Five. "Having the governor go down there sends a strong message to the Air Force during their decision-making process."

O'Brien said he would have liked to see more diversity of views on the trip, but it was not his call to make.

Greco agreed, chiding the governor for listening only to one side -- those who strongly favor the plane.

The charter flight is scheduled to depart at 6 a.m. Wednesday and return to Burlington airport about 7 p.m. that night.